angelod307 wrote:so, i have been listening to the latest setup. i can hear the differences in some of the cables i have. and i must say i like the ruby's the most. i also did some apple lossless via sqeezebox vs. jolida cd player, and the cd wins hands down. the magic essence of the recordings are lost in the sqeezebox player. that guy who posted way back about the digital playback was equal to a high end player is really missing out on what makes this stuff so much fun to listen to.

I didn't see the original post on the digital playback but I agree any time you compress a digital file something is going to be lost the Apple lossless file is essentially a compression of the original uncompressed digital recording supplied on the CD unless the source for that file was made from a recording with a higher sampling rate then it will never be equal to or better then what you get directly from the original CD recording.

ekog wrote:I didn't see the original post on the digital playback but I agree any time you compress a digital file something is going to be lost the Apple lossless file is essentially a compression of the original uncompressed digital recording supplied on the CD unless the source for that file was made from a recording with a higher sampling rate then it will never be equal to or better then what you get directly from the original CD recording.

I think we're getting compression mixed up again. NOTHING, I repeat NOTHING is lost when you compress digital signals to save space, be it with Apple Lossless, WMA Lossless, FLAC, etc. These are simply algorithms that pack the bits into a smaller area on a disk. Signal compression is an analog thing (although it can be done digitally with floating point arithmetic) that actually reduces the dynamic range of the signal. If done correctly (around a fixed point with a known algorithm) it can be restored (a la Dolby and dbx). But mostly it is used by audio engineers to make records sound loud so they grab peoples attention on radio. They sound like crap in their original and copied forms, no matter what you do to them.

So, your statement that "it will never be equal to or better than you get directly from the original CD" should be more limiting. A copied signal in Apple Lossless will be IDENTICAL TO the original that it was ripped from. No bits will be lost.

Think of it this way if you have ever programmed a computer. You write a program that is really popular that all your friends want. Being a nice guy, you want to distribute it to them, but it's too big, so you ZIP it into a folder and attach it to an e-mail to your friends. They unzip it and run it exactly as it had been written. If there had been anything lost in the zipping and unzipping, the program wouldn't work at all. It's the same with lossless compression.

ekog wrote:I didn't see the original post on the digital playback but I agree any time you compress a digital file something is going to be lost the Apple lossless file is essentially a compression of the original uncompressed digital recording supplied on the CD unless the source for that file was made from a recording with a higher sampling rate then it will never be equal to or better then what you get directly from the original CD recording.

I think we're getting compression mixed up again. NOTHING, I repeat NOTHING is lost when you compress digital signals to save space, be it with Apple Lossless, WMA Lossless, FLAC, etc. These are simply algorithms that pack the bits into a smaller area on a disk. Signal compression is an analog thing (although it can be done digitally with floating point arithmetic) that actually reduces the dynamic range of the signal. If done correctly (around a fixed point with a known algorithm) it can be restored (a la Dolby and dbx). But mostly it is used by audio engineers to make records sound loud so they grab peoples attention on radio. They sound like crap in their original and copied forms, no matter what you do to them.

So, your statement that "it will never be equal to or better than you get directly from the original CD" should be more limiting. A copied signal in Apple Lossless will be IDENTICAL TO the original that it was ripped from. No bits will be lost.

Think of it this way if you have ever programmed a computer. You write a program that is really popular that all your friends want. Being a nice guy, you want to distribute it to them, but it's too big, so you ZIP it into a folder and attach it to an e-mail to your friends. They unzip it and run it exactly as it had been written. If there had been anything lost in the zipping and unzipping, the program wouldn't work at all. It's the same with lossless compression.

I've ripped all of my cd's in wma lossless and I can't hear any difference. I love having all my tunes on a computer.

Only question: are those all on the same circuit and is it a dedicated one? I would think with all that gear you would want at least 1 or 2 dedicated 20 amp circuits for those amps...

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